Swim team focuses on team chemistry ahead of upcoming season

Though the team’s first meet is not until October, the season for the Mines’ swim team is looking bright—like the sun at their early 5:30 am practices. They are starting off the season with new talented recruits and by focusing on synergy in both the races and practices.

After a long summer, the team jumped right in to intensive practices.

“Coach dove in real hard and definitely made it challenging,” senior swimmer Britt Holloway says. Their aim in practice is to start with the fundamentals and build on them throughout the season.

“The new freshmen are super positive and there’s no complaining even though coach has been super hard on us right away. None of them really complained—they all just bit the bullet,” Holloway comments about the incoming recruits. With losing only one senior and gaining six new freshmen, the season is starting off on a great note.

“I’m really excited about this year. We got a really cool group of freshmen. They’re all really excited about swimming. It’s so cool to see the freshmen and how close they already are. They’re already hanging out with the team all the time,” sophomore Briana Burns states. Trusting each other and creating camaraderie with each other is going to be key for the team this season.

“The team is really working on dealing with criticisms from teammates positively and focusing on contribution to the team as a whole. I think that we spend a lot of time thinking about our competitors. One of our biggest competitors up at Mesa University has 30 recruited freshmen and I’m just afraid that concentrating on that might throw some of us off our games. But there’s not necessarily power in numbers, so we just need to keep our minds on that,” Holloway discloses.

“I think our team dynamic is really strong this year. Everyone is super involved. When we are supporting each other as a team I think we can do a lot better. On our team there’s just so much potential for anyone to do something great,” Burns confirms. Because of the new recruits and positive attitude of the whole team, they are anticipating sending their first girls relays to nationals!